John Oates Quotes (47 Quotes)

The contrast is that we're very different people, in terms of our personal lives and our personalities. We don't step on each other's toes. It's a delicate balance.

If I stopped touring tomorrow, it wouldn't change my life.

In the '80s Milli Vanilli was ruined by lip-synching, ... but now it's looked upon as enhancing people's careers. Today the weirder and creepier your life is, the more successful you are. There no longer seems to be any substance to performers and bands today. Everybody just wants to be famous. We come from a more traditional old school. We're proud that we sing and play live. We grew up paying our dues, learning from our masters.

I think we realized this is a good time now because people really do want to hear some realistic songs, something that has some substance to it.

If you look over the years, the styles have changed - the clothes, the hair, the production, the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it's really the same.

I'm a bit more grounded than Daryl. I'm more practical, more pragmatic. Daryl looks more at the creative side. We have very different families, we're very different persons. But because we grew up in the same area and because we love the same music, we have a bond.

We collaborate together. We work with other people. We work by ourselves.

I think we've always prided ourselves and perceived ourselves as songwriters, so it wasn't an album that we felt we had to do, ... But we knew that some day we'll do an album like that, and it will be fun. That's what it was really about. It was just the right time to do it.

I don't require what Daryl requires. He likes the performance a lot more than I do. I enjoy playing with a great band. I don't need to tour.

I grew up in Pennsylvania, only fifteen miles away from Daryl where all the local kids with a German background looked like he did.

I have a great family, I live an amazing life.

You have to know when to strike and when to retreat.

I think people were just starving for good material because they just weren't getting it on the radio.

At some point in their career, most people do an album of great hits of other performers - a tribute album that shows their influences.

The thing is, we've changed our style but we've never changed the actual roots of what we've done.

If it wasn't for music, I doubt whether we'd be friends.

This music is like an old friend, one for whom you will always feel a kinship and closeness. When people hear this recording they will understand more clearly the roots of our original songs and perhaps have a bit more insight into where they really came from.

Sometimes, it's just great to bring new people into the mix.

I couldn't begin to name names... in general I have found racers to be some of the most competitive people on the planet... and some of the nicest as well.

If Daryl stopped touring it would be a big part of him missing.

Funny, even though we're known as Philly musicians and our sound is predicated on that, I lived in Philly just four years, ... Then we both moved to NYC and lived there throughout the '70s and '80s.

I just like playing with the band and doing what I do.

I was just glad to meet somebody outside of my group of small town friends who was into music. Somebody else who had aspirations to do something more than sing at a record hop.

I like playing on stage, don't get me wrong.

We've been together since we've been teenagers. I can go away and disappear for two years, and when we get back together, it's like nothing ever has changed.

Most relationships where two people have the same motivation, needs, desires and requirements... there's usually a butting of heads at one point.

I wish I could see over crowds and small groups of people.

Sex has spoiled Daryl but not success.

The idea was to take these great songs, take them out of their production style and their dated recording style, and show them for the songs that they are--as if you had just played them on an acoustic guitar. It's all about timeless songwriting, really.

To me, when a great band is playing together, it's amazing for me.

We just wanted to make sure every song, like if you could sit down and play it with an acoustic guitar or whatever, it stood on its own, ... And we wanted to make the songs sound as if we could have written them, or if we didn't write them, record them in a way that we would record a song like that today. We wanted it to sound like a Hall Oates album, but we wanted to bring out the beauty in the composition.

The thing is that we travel so much together that it wouldn't be a vacation. You get off the road and you're going to turn around and travel again

In our relationship, we don't have that situation. I don't require what he needs, and he doesn't require what I need. I know what I do; I have an amazing life that nobody knows about.

We should have an easier name to pronounce.

We've never been apart, ... The whole time, we've been working and recording. So it's not about coming back. It's about continuing. I understand why (some people) might think we had disappeared. Our visibility has been almost nil. But the point is, we're a working band.

I live in the middle of the mountains in Aspen Colorado, I have the tractor on my ranch. Right out my door is thousands of acres of national forest.

I do a lot of things behind the scenes. I do a lot of things that don't hit the headlines.

Swimming upstream in the music business is a hard thing to do.

It's the music that brings us together.

Well, because we're so different as people. And it's that difference that probably also makes it easy to stay together, because we don't get in each others way.

Our music just seemed to fit. Radio embraced it, and before we knew it, we were pop idols.

Well, before we met I had heard and seen him sing so I knew he was good.

I read and fantasized about the European racing scene by pouring over my old collection of Road and Track that goes back to the late 40's.

Which is why it's spectacularly appropriate that The Funk Brothers - Motown's original house band - are opening up for Hall Oates. It's a great bill, ... We're carrying on their tradition. So we'll see when we get into Montreal if we're going to play a few songs together.

We've done that over the years, each of us releasing solos. I think that's why we're still together. That freedom doesn't keep us too restricted.

We had a good run in the '70s but we got really big in the early '80s, ... It was a whirlwind. It was non-stop demands. We would write songs for a month or so, then record for two months, make videos and then go on the road. We put out a record a year fro

If something that needs to be done that we don't feel confronting, we do it through the manager.